A First Look at India’s Playboy Bunny

The bunny suit meets the sari. That, in a nutshell, is what India’s first Playboy bunnies will be wearing, once the first Playboy Club opens in India at some point next year.

The original bunny suit – the outfit worn by waitresses in Playboy Clubs – was co-designed in the 1960s by Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine. It consists in a corset, a collar, bunny ears and a fluffy tail.

The Indian version is far more conservative, in keeping with local cultural sensitivities . The bunnies will be wearing full-length sheer skirts and tube tops with fabric draped over one of their shoulders. All else stays. Designed by Mohini Tadikonda, a New-York based fashion designer, the Indian version of the Playboy Bunny was unveiled at a press conference Wednesday in Mumbai.

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The original Playboy bunny suit.

India is the only country where the waitresses at the Playboy Club will don a localized costume. “The goal was being respectful of Indian culture,” said Matthew Nordby, a senior executive at Playboy Enterprises Inc.

For now, the bunnies are all foreign. Eventually, “we are open to hiring Indian women too,” said Sanjay Gupta, chief executive officer of PB Lifestyle Ltd., a local company that is licensed to market Playboy merchandise, and set up and manage clubs in India.

The company, which first announced its entry in India last month, plans to set up 120 Playboy outlets in the country over the next decade. The first is set to open in Goa by March 2013. The second outlet will be in Hyderabad.

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